I never thought Ronald Reagan was really the man his admirers made him out to be, but this is not the time to discuss that. What unsettles me today is not his passing — he'd been gone for all practical purposes for many years — but that we're in for a few months of seeing his memory exploited by ostensible followers. Nothing happens in the world today without the partisans saying, "Hmm…how do we use this to push our agenda?" So we're going to have to put up with folks arguing that it would be disrespectful of Reagan's legacy not to enact certain tax cuts or to repeal the ban on assault weapons or whatever.
I wish people would fight more honestly and not load their arguments with emotional issues, but I guess that's asking too much. Lately on Crossfire, Robert Novak has been insinuating that anyone who finds fault with anything currently being done in Iraq is someone who wishes Saddam Hussein were back in power. (The hypocrisy in that ploy is even more glaring if you read Novak's columns away from Crossfire, where he publishes negative assessments of U.S. efforts overseas. But in a one-on-one debate with liberals, he feels compelled to brand them as pro-Saddam.) I'm really tired of people wrapping their arguments in the flag or the Bible or the memory of our dead soldiers or the people who perished on 9/11. And yes, Democrats do it too, arguing to carry on the legacy of Paul Wellstone and such, sometimes even reaching back to Kennedy, dragging in all sorts of irrelevancies, hoping the current proposals can coast on the emotional appeal. Whatever happened to campaigning for a cause on its own merits?
If one wishes to honor Ronald Reagan, a dandy (and totally appropriate) way would be to open up stem-cell research and fully fund it. Nancy Reagan has been crusading for this for years, saying that it might prevent others from contracting Alzheimer's as did her husband. Somehow, I suspect his fans won't want to waste the opportunity on something like that. We'll probably hear that we need to respect Reagan's legacy by re-electing George W. Bush. And someone will even be shameless enough to say, of the November election, we need to "Win this one for the Gipper."